My name is Odessa Petit dit Dariel, RN, MSN, PhD candidate (University of Nottingham, UK). I am half American/half French and completed my nurse education in the US. I have recently returned to live in France to contribute to the development of nursing in my country. As many of you are aware, France only began recognising nurse education at a ‘bachelors’ level in 2009 and the department in which I work is the first to offer a Masters of Science in Nursing (Département des Sciences Infirmières et Paramédicales de l’École des Hautes Études en Santé Publique).

I have joined this forum because I was hoping to get some information on the status of Nursing as ‘Discipline.’ Is it officially and formally recognised by other disciplines as a discipline in its own right, and if so what were the criteria and the process that led to this recognition?

The US, in my humble opinion, is the country that has been leading the way toward recognising nursing as an academic profession (and a Discipline?). However, I am certain there are a number of other countries which have also made significant progress in this department and I was hoping to compare and contrast in order to identify the benchmarks necessary for moving in the direction of getting nursing recognised as a discipline in France.

My department is seeking guidance from other countries to move our profession forward as we are meeting a lot of resistance from our Department of Health and Department of Education. We would like to present some evidence to support and justify our movement to be recognised as a DISCIPLINE.

I would be very grateful for any information you might be able to provide me.

I just got done reading a ton of threads where nurses have been disciplined very harshly by the board. Countless threads go on to tell a story of a nurses life turned upside down due to a past substance abuse problem or because of having a criminal history.

In alot of these cases, the consequences and discipline the board dishes out is understandable but some are just ridiculous. I mean, the board not giving someone a license because of a charge that was over 10 years old..and didn't even result in a conviction? Or the board making someone pay thousands of dollars and jump through hoops for years because of a past alcohol abuse problem over 7 years ago? ect. ect. These are just two of many examples.

Im curious, is the discipline so harsh because nurses generally have access to narc's? I mean, do respiratory therapists and radiologic technologists have such harsh consequences as well?

Characteristics that support nursing as a discipline:1. Contains codified knowledge with a common agreement on structure of inquiry and the knowledge it produces.2. Theory based within a conceptual framework3. Established paradigms that define the ordering of knowledge and associated social structures.4. Shares a common ethos with orderly behavior recognized as characteristic of the discipline.5. Contains autonomous professionals who are socialized within the profession

The sticky part of nursing is that it is both art and science. However these traits are not always mutually exclusive and do intersect to give nursing its distinct definition. I support that the art aspect of nursing is in itself epistemological because it is the act of aesthetic knowledge judged according to Chinn and Kramer (2011, p.4) as “pertinent to the focus of a discipline by its members. Your thoughts? Deb

It is so nice to hear about nursing in other countries and the discipline. I am from a small twin Island Caribbean country called Trinidad and Tobago and here we have Associate Degree in Nursing which has recently been phased out and Bachelors in Nursing is now offered and then you can go on to do your Masters. But with all of that said, I still believe as a small country we still have far to go since a lot of our nurses are migrating to the larger countries.

We are not truly recognized as a discipline in our own right here but we are definitely fighting for it.